Ex-Barclays CEO Diamond Hires Schamis as Founding Partner

Atlas Merchant Capital LLC, the investment firm started last year by former Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer Bob Diamond, hired David Schamis as a founding partner.

Schamis, a former managing director at buyout firm J.C. Flowers & Co., will oversee private-equity investing, according to a statement yesterday from New York-based Atlas. Schamis was also a director at MF Global Holdings Ltd., the bankrupt brokerage that was run by Jon Corzine.

“David is a financial-services powerhouse and a consummate deal maker,” Diamond said in the statement. “He will be an enormous asset to Atlas as we pursue investments that have become available due to dislocations in the financial-services industry worldwide.”

Diamond quit London-based Barclays in July 2012 after the British bank admitted to rigging global interest rates and was fined 290 million pounds ($481 million) by U.S. and U.K. regulators. He joined Barclays in 1996 and built its investment bank into the world’s biggest global bond underwriter.

Schamis joins Will McDonough as a founding partner at Atlas Merchant Capital, where Diamond is CEO. McDonough previously managed partners’ money at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to Atlas’s website.

“The opportunity to work with Bob Diamond as a founding partner in this new venture is too compelling to pass up,” Schamis said in the statement. “The opportunities in global financial services are significant.”